George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals. Vol. 2 (of 3)

Your letter has made me feel, more strongly than any other testimony, that it would have been a pity if I had listened to the tempter Despondency. I took a great deal of pains to get a true idea of the period. My own recollections of it are childish, and of course disjointed, but they help to illuminate my reading. I went through the Times of 1832-33 at the British Museum, to be sure of as many details as I could. It is amazing what strong language was used in those days, especially about the Church. "Bloated pluralists," "Stall-fed dignitaries," etc., are the sort of phrases conspicuous. There is one passage of prophecy which I longed to quote, but I thought it wiser to abstain. "Now, the beauty of the Reform Bill is that, under its mature operation, the people must and will become free agents" – a prophecy which I hope is true, only the maturity of the operation has not arrived yet.

Mr. Lewes is well satisfied with the portion of the third volume already written; and, as I am better in health just now, I hope to go on with spirit, especially with the help of your cordial sympathy. I trust you will see, when it comes, that the third volume is the natural issue prepared for by the first and second.

Letter to Frederic Harrison, 27th April, 1866.

A thousand thanks for your note. Do not worry yourself so much about those two questions that you will be forced to hate me. On Tuesday next we are to go to Dorking for probably a fortnight. I wished you to read the first hundred pages of my third volume; but I fear now that I must be content to wait and send you a duplicate proof of a chapter or two that are likely to make a lawyer shudder by their poetic license. Please to be in great distress sometime for want of my advice, and tease me considerably to get it, that I may prove my grateful memory of these days.

Letter to John Blackwood, 30th April, 1866.

To-morrow we go – Mr. Lewes's bad health driving us – to Dorking, where everything will reach me as quickly as in London.

I am in a horrible fidget about certain points which I want to be sure of in correcting my proofs. They are chiefly two questions. I wish to know,

1. Whether, in Napoleon's war with England, after the breaking-up of the Treaty of Amiens, the seizure and imprisonment of civilians was exceptional, or whether it was continued throughout the war?

2. Whether, in 1833, in the case of transportation to one of the colonies, when the sentence did not involve hard labor, the sentenced person might be at large on his arrival in the colony?

It is possible you may have some one near at hand who will answer these questions. I am sure you will help me if you can, and will sympathize in my anxiety not to have even an allusion that involves practical impossibilities.

One can never be perfectly accurate, even with one's best effort, but the effort must be made.

Journal, 1866.

May 31.– Finished "Felix Holt."

The manuscript bears the following inscription:

"From George Eliot to her dear Husband, this thirteenth year of their united life, in which the deepening sense of her own imperfectness has the consolation of their deepening love."

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 5th June, 1866.

My last hope of seeing you before we start has vanished. I find that the things urged upon me to be done in addition to my own small matters of preparation will leave me no time to enjoy anything that I should have chosen if I had been at leisure. Last Thursday only I finished writing, in a state of nervous excitement that had been making my head throb and my heart palpitate all the week before. As soon as I had finished I felt well. You know how we had counted on a parting sight of you; and I should have particularly liked to see Emily and witness the good effect of Derbyshire. But send us a word or two if you can, just to say how you all three are. We start on Thursday evening for Brussels. Then to Antwerp, the Hague, and Amsterdam. Out of Holland we are to find our way to Schwalbach. Let your love go with us, as mine will hover about you and all yours – that group of three which the word "Wandsworth" always means for us.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 5th June, 1866.

I finished writing ("Felix Holt") on the last day of May, after days and nights of throbbing and palpitation – chiefly, I suppose, from a nervous excitement which I was not strong enough to support well. As soon as I had done I felt better, and have been a new creature ever since, though a little overdone with visits from friends and attention (miserabile dictu!) to petticoats, etc.

Letter to Mrs. Bray, 6th June, 1866.

I can't help being a little vexed that the course of things hinders my having the great delight of seeing you again, during this visit to town. Now that my mind is quite free, I don't know anything I should have chosen sooner than to have a long, long quiet day with you.

Journal, 1866.

June 7.– Set off on our journey to Holland.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 25th June, 1866, from Schwalbach.

I wish you could know how idle I feel, how utterly disinclined to anything but mere self-indulgence; because that knowledge would enable you to estimate the affection and anxiety which prompt me to write in spite of disinclination. June is so far gone, that by the time you get this letter you will surely have some result of the examination to tell me of; and I can't bear to deprive myself of that news by not letting you know where we are. "In Paradise," George says; but the Paradise is in the fields and woods of beech and fir, where we walk in uninterrupted solitude in spite of the excellent roads and delightful resting-places, which seem to have been prepared for visitors in general. The promenade, where the ladies – chiefly Russian and German, with only a small sprinkling of English and Americans – display their ornamental petticoats and various hats, is only the outskirt of Paradise; but we amuse ourselves there for an hour or so in the early morning and evening, listening to the music and learning the faces of our neighbors. There is a deficiency of men, children, and dogs, otherwise the winding walks, the luxuriant trees and grass, and the abundant seats of the promenade have every charm one can expect at a German bath. We arrived here last Thursday, after a fortnight spent in Belgium and Holland; and we still fall to interjections of delight whenever we walk out – first at the beauty of the place, and next at our own happiness in not having been frightened away from it by the predictions of travellers and hotel-keepers, that we should find no one here – that the Prussians would break up the railways, etc., etc. – Nassau being one of the majority of small states who are against Prussia. I fear we are a little in danger of becoming like the Bürger in "Faust," and making it too much the entertainment of our holiday to have a

"Gespräch von Krieg und KriegsgeschreiWenn hinten, weit, in der Türkei,Die Völker auf einander schlagen."

Idle people are so eager for newspapers that tell them of other people's energetic enthusiasm! A few soldiers are quartered here, and we see them wisely using their leisure to drink at the Brunnen. They are the only suggestion of war that meets our eyes among these woody hills. Already we feel great benefit from our quiet journeying and repose. George is looking remarkably well, and seems to have nothing the matter with him. You know how magically quick his recoveries seem. I am too refined to say anything about our excellent quarters and good meals; but one detail, I know, will touch your sympathy. We dine in our own room! It would have marred the Kur for me if I had had every day to undergo a table d'hôte where almost all the guests are English, presided over by the British chaplain. Please don't suspect me of being scornful towards my fellow countrymen or women: the fault is all mine that I am miserably gênée by the glances of strange eyes.

We want news from you to complete our satisfaction, and no one can give it but yourself. Send us as many matter-of-fact details as you have the patience to write. We shall not be here after the 4th, but at Schlangenbad.

Letter to Mrs. Congreve, 3d Aug. 1866.

We got home last night, after a rough passage from Ostend. You have been so continually a recurrent thought to me ever since I had your letter at Schwalbach, that it is only natural I should write to you as soon as I am at my old desk again. The news of Mr. Congreve's examination being over made me feel for several days that something had happened which caused me unusual lightness of heart. I would not dwell on the possibility of your having to leave Wandsworth, which, I know, would cause you many sacrifices. I clung solely to the great, cheering fact that a load of anxiety had been lifted from Mr. Congreve's mind. May we not put in a petition for some of his time now? And will he not come with you and Emily to dine with us next week, on any day except Wednesday and Friday? The dinner-hour seems more propitious for talk and enjoyment than lunch-time; but in all respects choose what will best suit your health and habits – only let us see you.

Letter to Frederic Harrison, 4th Aug. 1866.

We returned from our health-seeking journey on Thursday evening, and your letter was the most delightful thing that awaited me at home. Be sure it will be much read and meditated; and may I not take it as an earnest that your help, which has already done so much for me, will be continued? I mean, that you will help me by your thoughts and your sympathy – not that you will be teased with my proofs.

I meant to write you a long letter about the æsthetic problem; but Mr. Lewes, who is still tormented with headachy effects from our rough passage, comes and asks me to walk to Hampstead with him, so I send these hasty lines. Come and see us soon.

Letter to John Blackwood, 4th Aug. 1866.

We got home on Thursday evening, and are still feeling some unpleasant effects from our very rough passage – an inconvenience which we had waited some days at Ostend to avoid. But the wind took no notice of us, and went on blowing.

I was much pleased with the handsome appearance of the three volumes which were lying ready for me. My hatred of bad paper and bad print, and my love of their opposites, naturally get stronger as my eyes get weaker; and certainly that taste could hardly be better gratified than it is by Messrs. Blackwood & Sons.

Colonel Hamley's volume is another example of that fact. It lies now on my revolving desk as one of the books I mean first to read. I am really grateful to have such a medium of knowledge, and I expect it to make some pages of history much less dim to me.

My impression of Colonel Hamley, when we had that pleasant dinner at Greenwich, and afterwards when he called in Blandford Square, was quite in keeping with the high opinion you express. Mr. Lewes liked the article on "Felix" in the Magazine very much. He read it the first thing yesterday morning, and told me it was written in a nice spirit, and the extracts judiciously made.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 10th Aug. 1866.

I have had a delightful holiday, and find my double self very much the better for it. We made a great round in our journeying. From Antwerp to Rotterdam, the Hague, Leyden, Amsterdam, Cologne; then up the Rhine to Coblentz, and thence to Schwalbach, where we stayed a fortnight. From Schwalbach to Schlangenbad, where we stayed till we feared the boats would cease to go to and fro; and, in fact, only left just in time to get down the Rhine to Bonn by the Dutch steamer. From Bonn, after two days, we went to Aix; then to dear old Liége, where we had been together thirteen years before; and, to avoid the King of the Belgians, ten minutes backwards to the baths of pretty Chaudfontaine, where we remained three days. Then to Louvain, Ghent, and Bruges; and, last of all, to Ostend, where we waited for a fine day and calm sea, until we secured – a very rough passage indeed.

Ought we not to be a great deal wiser and more efficient personages, or else to be ashamed of ourselves? Unhappily, this last alternative is not a compensation for wisdom.

I thought of you – to mention one occasion among many – when we had the good fortune, at Antwerp, to see a placard announcing that the company from the Ober-Ammergau, Bavaria, would represent, that Sunday evening, the Lebensgeschichte of our Saviour Christ, at the Théatre des Variétés. I remembered that you had seen the representation with deep interest – and these actors are doubtless the successors of those you saw. Of course we went to the theatre. And the Christ was, without exaggeration, beautiful. All the rest was inferior, and might even have had a painful approach to the ludicrous; but both the person and the action of the Jesus were fine enough to overpower all meaner impressions. Mr. Lewes, who, you know, is keenly alive to everything "stagey" in physiognomy and gesture, felt what I am saying quite as much as I did, and was much moved.

Rotterdam, with the grand approach to it by the broad river; the rich red brick of the houses; the canals, uniformly planted with trees, and crowded with the bright brown masts of the Dutch boats – is far finer than Amsterdam. The color of Amsterdam is ugly; the houses are of a chocolate color, almost black (an artificial tinge given to the bricks), and the woodwork on them screams out in ugly patches of cream-color; the canals have no trees along their sides, and the boats are infrequent. We looked about for the very Portuguese synagogue where Spinoza was nearly assassinated as he came from worship. But it no longer exists. There are no less than three Portuguese synagogues now – very large and handsome. And in the evening we went to see the worship there. Not a woman was present, but of devout men not a few – a curious reversal of what one sees in other temples. The chanting and the swaying about of the bodies – almost a wriggling – are not beautiful to the sense; but I fairly cried at witnessing this faint symbolism of a religion of sublime, far-off memories. The skulls of St. Ursula's eleven thousand virgins seem a modern suggestion compared with the Jewish Synagogue. At Schwalbach and Schlangenbad our life was led chiefly in the beech woods, which we had all to ourselves, the guests usually confining themselves to the nearer promenades. The guests, of course, were few in that serious time; and between war and cholera we felt our position as health – and pleasure – seekers somewhat contemptible.

There is no end to what one could say, if one did not feel that long letters cut pieces not to be spared out of the solid day.

I think I have earned that you should write me one of those perfect letters in which you make me see everything you like about yourself and others.

Journal, 1866.

Aug. 30.– I have taken up the idea of my drama, "The Spanish Gypsy," again, and am reading on Spanish subjects – Bouterwek, Sismondi, Depping, Llorante, etc.

Letter to Frederic Harrison, 15th Aug. 1866.

I have read several times your letter of the 19th, which I found awaiting me on my return, and I shall read it many times again. Pray do not even say, or inwardly suspect, that anything you take the trouble to write to me will not be valued. On the contrary, please to imagine as well as you can the experience of a mind morbidly desponding, of a consciousness tending more and more to consist in memories of error and imperfection rather than in a strengthening sense of achievement – and then consider how such a mind must need the support of sympathy and approval from those who are capable of understanding its aims. I assure you your letter is an evidence of a fuller understanding than I have ever had expressed to me before. And if I needed to give emphasis to this simple statement, I should suggest to you all the miseries one's obstinate egoism endures from the fact of being a writer of novels – books which the dullest and silliest reader thinks himself competent to deliver an opinion on. But I despise myself for feeling any annoyance at these trivial things.

That is a tremendously difficult problem which you have laid before me; and I think you see its difficulties, though they can hardly press upon you as they do on me, who have gone through again and again the severe effort of trying to make certain ideas thoroughly incarnate, as if they had revealed themselves to me first in the flesh and not in the spirit. I think æsthetic teaching is the highest of all teaching, because it deals with life in its highest complexity. But if it ceases to be purely æsthetic – if it lapses anywhere from the picture to the diagram – it becomes the most offensive of all teaching. Avowed Utopias are not offensive, because they are understood to have a scientific and expository character: they do not pretend to work on the emotions, or couldn't do it if they did pretend. I am sure, from your own statement, that you see this quite clearly. Well, then, consider the sort of agonizing labor to an English-fed imagination to make out a sufficiently real background for the desired picture – to get breathing, individual forms, and group them in the needful relations, so that the presentation will lay hold on the emotions as human experience – will, as you say, "flash" conviction on the world by means of aroused sympathy.

I took unspeakable pains in preparing to write "Romola" – neglecting nothing I could find that would help me to what I may call the "idiom" of Florence, in the largest sense one could stretch the word to; and then I was only trying to give some out of the normal relations. I felt that the necessary idealization could only be attained by adopting the clothing of the past. And again, it is my way (rather too much so, perhaps) to urge the human sanctities through tragedy – through pity and terror, as well as admiration and delight. I only say all this to show the tenfold arduousness of such a work as the one your problem demands. On the other hand, my whole soul goes with your desire that it should be done; and I shall at least keep the great possibility (or impossibility) perpetually in my mind, as something towards which I must strive, though it may be that I can do so only in a fragmentary way.

At present I am going to take up again a work which I laid down before writing "Felix." It is —but, please, let this be a secret between ourselves– an attempt at a drama, which I put aside at Mr. Lewes's request, after writing four acts, precisely because it was in that stage of creation – or Werden– in which the idea of the characters predominates over the incarnation. Now I read it again, I find it impossible to abandon it; the conceptions move me deeply, and they have never been wrought out before. There is not a thought or symbol that I do not long to use: but the whole requires recasting; and, as I never recast anything before, I think of the issue very doubtfully. When one has to work out the dramatic action for one's self, under the inspiration of an idea, instead of having a grand myth or an Italian novel ready to one's hand, one feels anything but omnipotent. Not that I should have done any better if I had had the myth or the novel, for I am not a good user of opportunities. I think I have the right locus and historic conditions, but much else is wanting.

I have not, of course, said half what I meant to say; but I hope opportunities of exchanging thoughts will not be wanting between us.

Letter to John Blackwood, 6th Sept. 1866.

It is so long since we exchanged letters, that I feel inclined to break the silence by telling you that I have been reading with much interest the "Operations of War," which you enriched me with. Also that I have had a pretty note, in aged handwriting, from Dean Ramsay, with a present of his "Reminiscences of Scottish Life." I suppose you know him quite well, but I never heard you mention him. Also – what will amuse you – that my readers take quite a tender care of my text, writing to me to tell me of a misprint, or of "one phrase" which they entreat to have altered, that no blemish may disfigure "Felix." Dr. Althaus has sent me word of a misprint which I am glad to know of – or, rather, of a word slipped out in the third volume. "She saw streaks of light, etc. … and sounds." It must be corrected when the opportunity comes.

We are very well, and I am swimming in Spanish history and literature. I feel as if I were molesting you with a letter without any good excuse, but you are not bound to write again until a wet day makes golf impossible, and creates a dreariness in which even letter-writing seems like a recreation.

Letter to John Blackwood, 11th Sept. 1866.

I am glad to know that Dean Ramsay is a friend of yours. His sympathy was worth having, and I at once wrote to thank him. Another wonderfully lively old man – Sir Henry Holland – came to see me about two Sundays ago, to bid me good-bye before going on an excursion to – North America! – and to tell me that he had just been re-reading "Adam Bede" for the fourth time. "I often read in it, you know, besides. But this is the fourth time quite through." I, of course, with the mother's egoism on behalf of the youngest born, was jealous for "Felix." Is there any possibility of satisfying an author? But one or two things that George read out to me from an article in Macmillan's Magazine, by Mr. Mozley, did satisfy me. And yet I sicken again with despondency under the sense that the most carefully written books lie, both outside and inside people's minds, deep undermost in a heap of trash.

Journal, 1866.

Sept. 15.– Finished Depping's "Juifs au Moyen Âge." Reading Chaucer, to study English. Also reading on Acoustics, Musical Instruments, etc.

Oct. 15.– Recommenced "The Spanish Gypsy," intending to give it a new form.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 22d Nov. 1866.

For a wonder I remembered the day of the month, and felt a delightful confidence that I should have a letter from her who always remembers such things at the right moment. You will hardly believe in my imbecility. I can never be quite sure whether your birthday is the 21st or the 23d. I know every one must think the worse of me for this want of retentiveness that seems a part of affection; and it is only justice that they should. Nevertheless I am not quite destitute of lovingness and gratitude, and perhaps the consciousness of my own defect makes me feel your goodness the more keenly. I shall reckon it part of the next year's happiness for me if it brings a great deal of happiness to you. That will depend somewhat – perhaps chiefly – on the satisfaction you have in giving shape to your ideas. But you say nothing on that subject.

We knew about Faraday's preaching, but not of his loss of faculty. I begin to think of such things as very near to me – I mean, decay of power and health. But I find age has its fresh elements of cheerfulness.

Bless you, dear Sara, for all the kindness of many years, and for the newest kindness that comes to me this morning. I am very well now, and able to enjoy my happiness. One has happiness sometimes without being able to enjoy it.

Journal, 1866.

Nov. 22.– Reading Renan's "Histoire des Langues Sémitiques" – Ticknor's "Spanish Literature."

Dec. 6.– We returned from Tunbridge Wells, where we have been for a week. I have been reading Cornewall Lewis's "Astronomy of the Ancients," Ockley's "History of the Saracens," "Astronomical Geography," and Spanish ballads on Bernardo del Carpio.

Letter to Miss Sara Hennell, 7th Dec. 1866.

We have been to Tunbridge Wells for a week, hoping to get plenty of fresh air, and walking in that sandy, undulating country. But for three days it rained incessantly.

No; I don't feel as if my faculties were failing me. On the contrary, I enjoy all subjects – all study – more than I ever did in my life before. But that very fact makes me more in need of resignation to the certain approach of age and death. Science, history, poetry – I don't know which draws me most, and there is little time left me for any one of them. I learned Spanish last year but one, and see new vistas everywhere. That makes me think of time thrown away when I was young – time that I should be so glad of now. I could enjoy everything, from arithmetic to antiquarianism, if I had large spaces of life before me. But instead of that I have a very small space. Unfeigned, unselfish, cheerful resignation is difficult. But I strive to get it.